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Fondu builds a social network for foodies

GetSpotOn has released Fondu, a new social networking app designed to create a community for sharing bit-sized reviews about restaurants, bars, cafes and other similar venues. Described by the creators as a “Foursquare for foodies,” Fondu allows users to write short reviews of places they’ve eaten at and provide simple ratings of one to four “petals.” Users can search for nearby places or draw from a list of their recent check-ins on Foursquare and quickly and effortlessly add mini-reviews and ratings. In contrast to other social networks and online review sites, Fondu is designed to focus only on the reviews from people that a user wants to hear from: friends, family, foodies or others that they trust rather than having to read through a larger collection of essentially anonymous comments from strangers. Reviews can also be published from within the app to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare for extended sharing and users can cheer and comment on their friends’ reviews, bookmark interesting places for later and give tokens of appreciation to places they particularly like. An integrated map provides a graphical display of nearby popular spots and the service also provides an index of trending reviews in the nearby area or around the world. Fondu requires iOS 4.3 or later and is available from the App Store as a free download. [via TechCrunch]